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January 2016

Bravo Olympus. Since a lot of people don’t hear when I make praise for something, I thought for a change I’d separate that out into a separate article, even if in the grand scheme of things what I’m about to praise is a modest, minor feature. Article on sansmirror.com

Nikon Lens Price Increases. The short version is this: Nikon claims that they have been absorbing raw materials price increases on their lenses and a few other items for some time, and this has gotten to the point where they can’t find other costs to cut further. Therefore something must give. What gave, starting March 1st, is the official pricing of a wide range of lenses in Japan. Article on dslrbodies.com

January 27, 2016

The Olympus Pen-F Reappears. Olympus today announced the Pen-F, a new camera that’s more rangefinder style than DSLR, and which competes fairly directly with the Panasonic GX-8, which has a similar form factor. Article on sansmirror.com. Data page for Pen-F

Nikon Firmware/Software Updates. The D3300 and D5500 get firmware updates to version 1.01 to support the new AF-P 18-55mm lens. Curiously, the update also reveals that AF-P lenses add a menu setting for enabling VR and on the D5500 for enabling or disabling manual focus override. Both cameras also get some minor bug fixes. Nikon Camera Control Pro 2.23.0 adds D5 and D500 support, as well as a number of small, but useful feature additions. Article on dslrbodies.com

Another Down Year for Cameras. Canon, as usual, was the first to report their latest financial information for the previous quarter. More importantly, Canon’s fiscal year is the calendar year, so their year-to-year results align with CIPA annual data, as do their forward projections. Article on dslrbodies.com

Desirable DX Lenses According to You. I was watching the numbers come in on the DX lens survey in real time for a few hours yesterday. Very early on trends were clear, and the final results stuck to those trends all the way through nearly 6000 votes, when I closed the poll. Article on dslrbodies.com

January 26, 2016

The Next Nikon According to You. Yesterday I had a poll on my main site asking you what you thought the next camera would be that Nikon updates. This was a crude form of crowd sourcing: sometimes a large group of relatively knowledgable folk can make accurate predictions about an area they’re familiar with. Article on dslrbodies.com

January 25, 2016

Compact Flash is Dead. Yes, the constant press of technology just keeps making you have to do things that you don’t want to. In today's case study: give up all those CompactFlash cards you’ve been acquiring over the digital DSLR era. Article on dslrbodies.com

Why There Should be a Nikon D700 Followup. A month before the D500 was announced, I wrote an article about why Nikon absolutely needed a followup to the D300. (Not that I hadn’t written about that before ;~). Even before then—and especially now that the D5/D500 combo has been launched—I was getting emails from people who insist that there needs to be a followup to the D700, too. Article on dslrbodies.com

January 22, 2016

Another Fujifilm Price Increase. Fujifilm is raising prices on its film offerings, effective immediately. The increase applies to all color negative, color reversal, black and white, and even Quick Snap boxes. Article on filmbodies.com

January 19, 2016

Just a Reminder about Camera Upgrading and Software. It happens every time we get a blast of new cameras on the market. And we just got two key new Nikon cameras, two key Fujifilm cameras, and are about to see new cameras from Canon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, and Sony. What is “it”? The complaints about software not understanding new raw format files. Article dslrbodies.com

January 18, 2016

Are You Better Technically or Aesthetically? As I browse around the Internet looking at what others are doing with their cameras, I’m struck time and again that I can group most collections of images I see from someone into “better technically” or “better aesthetically.” Article on dslrbodies.com

My Use of the Terms “Pro” and “Consumer” Cameras. Every now and again people reading this site get hung up with my use of the terms “consumer body” and “pro body.” For decades now—and especially in the digital era—Nikon has been relatively consistent in the way that they split their DSLR cameras into two distinct groups. It works something like this… Article on dslrbodies.com

The Coming Photographic Slowdown. Wait, haven’t I been reporting that digital camera sales peaked several years ago and have been falling ever since, and for some types of cameras, dropping very rapidly? Yes, I have. But it’s not just traditional cameras that are about to hit the ceiling. Article on dslrbodies.com

January 15, 2016

Fujifilm Announces the X-Pro2 and More. The X-Pro2 hasn’t exactly been a secret. Plenty of leaks occurred during the prototyping and testing cycle, then Fujifilm Australia had a premature e-postulation. So the word has been slowly getting out. With this news story, the actual press embargo is over and we can tell you about the camera. Article on sansmirror.com. X-Pro2 data page. X-E2s data page. 100-400mm data page.

January 14, 2016

The Missing Flash on the Nikon D500. The D500 appears to be a hit. Except for one thing: the missing internal flash. Article on dslrbodies.com

January 13, 2016

The Argument to Not Switch. It happens every time Canon or Nikon introduce significant products: users of the competitive product suddenly get a huge case of lens envy, or body envy, or pixel envy, or even just new envy. Article on dslrbodies.com

January 11, 2016

Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6 Review. The 200-500mm f/5.6E AF-S ED VR lens was a surprise announcement from Nikon. First, it was a surprise that Nikon would do another telephoto zoom so close to the 80-400mm/200-400mm lenses, but more importantly, at US$1400 this new lens looked like a bargain compared to virtually any other telephoto lens Nikon made recently. Review on dslrbodies.com

Welcome to 2016. 2015 was an okay year for Nikon DSLR users. We got the excellent D5500 and D7200 and an interesting option in the D810A. We got two great telephoto options (300mm f/4E and 200-500mm f/5.6E). The 16-80mm f/2.8-4 DX lens makes a very nice replacement for the aging 16-85mm. The 24mm f/1.8G is another great prime. Still, it seemed like Nikon was in between things, especially since the FX bar didn’t really move at all. Article on dslrbodies.com

A Few More CES Thoughts. I have no idea why Nikon pre-announced the KeyMission 360. I thought that was a foolish idea, and Thursday night I was basically proven right: GoPro announced they’ll have something equivalent shortly. Article on dslrbodies.com

January 8, 2016

Consumer, Pro, DX, or FX?. As usual with any new camera introduction—especially Nikon DSLRs—the pile of questions I receive about “what should I get” suddenly grows to be pretty darned thick. In hopes of reducing that stack considerably, I hereby present Thom’s Short Cut to Deciding. Article on dslrbodies.com

The Day After (More on the D500 and D5). Things are starting to settle in and details are getting fleshed out on Nikon’s unexpected announcement of twins yesterday. Article on dslrbodies.com.

January 5, 2016

Nikon Goes Back to the Future. Nikon today did what not many expected them to do: they repeated their D3/D300 launch with a D5/D500 combination launch. That’s right, matching FX and DX professional bodies, with pretty much the same specifications other than those that relate to the sensor size. Plus we got a Speedlight SB-5000, WT-6, WT-7, Snapbridge app, Key Mission 360, and more. Article on dsrlbodies.com. D5 data page. D500 data page.